


Not for Naught

by clarabelle



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Family, Family Feels, Gen, I just wanted another Gallagher sibling okay?, Mostly to yell at Lip, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-06 19:46:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18224624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarabelle/pseuds/clarabelle
Summary: "It can be crowded, living in a house with seven people (sometimes eight, when Frank’s around). Someone drank the last of the milk. All of the toilets are backed up and Carl is thrilled to piss in the kitchen sink. And showers, always the showers. Lip and Ian fight over who gets the first shower every morning./Dumbasses/, thinks Mal as she flips over in her bed, fluffing her pillow. She can hear Lip pounding and cursing at the door. Ian must have gotten there first."*Born between Lip and Ian, there's another Gallagher sibling. Her name is Mallory Gallagher, and South Side is her home.





	Not for Naught

It can be crowded, living in a house with seven people (sometimes eight, when Frank’s around). Someone drank the last of the milk. All of the toilets are backed up and Carl is thrilled to piss in the kitchen sink. And showers, always the showers. Lip and Ian fight over who gets the first shower every morning.

_Dumbasses_ , thinks Mal as she flips over in her bed, fluffing her pillow. She can hear Lip pounding and cursing at the door. Ian must have gotten there first.

Mal is happy to let them duke it out. She showered last night, like she does every night, and she hopes they never catch on to her schedule. This way, she gets to lay in bed for fifteen more minutes while their shitty water heater freezes them out one by one.

“Morning,” Fiona says, leaning against the door frame. She’s smiling fondly at Debbie’s sleeping form on the bunk below, at Liam standing up in his crib. There is a tiny moment of peace before Fi flicks on the light.

“Hey, Fi,” Mallory groans, rubbing at her eyes. She dozes for a bit while Fiona gets the kids ready for school. Debbie sings to herself while she puts her hair in matching pigtails. Eventually Mal has no choice but to get up. Fi has a special way of calling out to one of her siblings so it can be heard from down the block.

“You better be up, Carl!” yells Fiona from where she’s changing Liam. She sighs and tickles his belly before looking up at Mal’s bunk. “You too, Mal.”

Mal jumps from her bed, makes a funny face at Liam, and gets dressed for the day. Jeans, t-shirt, jacket, converse; Mal combs out her hair in the mirror (the same orangish-red as Ian’s, as Monica’s) and calls it good. No makeup. Impressing people in high school is for sluts and jocks, not her.

She wanders downstairs for breakfast to find Fi staring at the calendar. “Shit,” Fi says.

Mal sits at her usual seat by the window. She reaches for the cereal, grabbing one of the king-size boxes and pouring. The milk is almost gone. She doesn’t want to be the asshole who steals it all, so she hands it to Fi to water down. Debbie is feeding Liam some dry cheerios at the other end of the table.

“What’d we forget this time?” Mallory asks.

“Electric,” Fiona says.

“Shit,” Mal agrees, nodding.

Fi comes back with the milk and drops a box in front of her. Mal adds a few bills from her last paycheck. She was hoping to get another pack of cigs with that but she can maybe talk Ian into giving her a discount. For some reason he’s really against outright stealing from Kash and Grab.

Soon Lip comes down the stairs looking half-asleep. Mal passes him the box when he sits down next to her. “Electric,” she explains.

“Coming through,” Ian says, carrying Carl in on his back and making airplane noises. They settle at the side of the table facing the kitchen and dig into their breakfast like they’re starving.

“Electric,” Lip says to Ian, who says the same to Carl, who says the same to Debbie. They pass around the cereal along with the box. Fiona is running circles around the kitchen, looking stressed.

“No,” she sternly says. Fiona snaps her fingers at Carl and points to the big ketchup stain on his shirt. “You’ve got a Happy Meal on the front of that shirt.” Carl rolls his eyes but doesn’t complain when Fiona makes him turn it inside-out. Mal pulls on the tag that’s sticking out at his collar, and he rolls his eyes again.

“Oh, um, field trip,” Ian says as he hands the paper to Debbie. “Needs Dad’s signature.”

“Hey, me too,” Mal says, reaching into her bag for her own copy. Frank and Monica could never keep it in their pants for very long. Mal and Ian are nine months apart and they share some of the same classes. (Not many, because Ian is in AP English and Mal doesn’t want to be a paratrooper.)

“Wow, Debs. That’s getting really good,” says Lip. Mal winks at her in thank you.

“Who’s got the phone?” asks Fiona. Lip does; he throws it across the kitchen. Fiona is trying to get their washer to work by shoving a chair against it.

“I need something for show-and-tell,” Debbie says as she counts the money for the electric bill.

“How much are we short?” asks Fiona.

Nineteen dollars. They’re always short, though, and they always find a way. Someone needs to watch Liam too if Fiona’s gonna pick up a shift to cover it - Fiona says as much.

Easy solution. “Pretend to be Mom and call me outta school,” Mal says, smirking. It’s not like she enjoys going anyway.

“With all fourteen of our minutes left?” Fiona says, waving the cellphone. She pulls Liam out of his highchair to feed him herself. “I don’t think so.”

Mal stands to put her bowl in the sink and holds out her arms to take Liam. “Seriously, Fi,” she says. It’s only a matter of time before she drops out to help her, get an actual job that isn’t stacking books at the library.

It’s almost like Fiona can hear her thoughts. She has steel in her eyes as she tell Mal to get to school. So Mal gets to school.

 

\---

 

Lip is smart. Like really, really smart. He always has been, placed in every advanced class their ghetto school offers and he of course passes them with ease. Calculus, physics, advanced mathematics, you name it. Monica called him her “little genius” when she was around. Frank, of course, would take full credit for his intellect.

Mal walks to the bathroom for a late night piss, and it is times like this that she realizes her oldest brother - smart as he is - can be a total dumbass.

“I got a hummer today,” Lip says. He sounds so proud of himself. Mal rolls her eyes and doesn’t even plan on hearing the rest of it (she does really have to pee) until Lip adds, “From Karen Jackson.”

Karen and _Lip_?

“No way!” Ian says.

Mallory inches closer to the door.

Lip and Ian are rolling a joint between the two of them, standing in front of the window. They pass it back and forth.

“You wouldn’t have waited this long to tell me,” Ian points out. And that might be true. Ian and Lip tell each other everything.

“You ever had a knob-job?” Lip asks.

“Once or twice,” Ian says. Mal makes a face. Her little brother. Jesus Christ.

“Didn’t hear _you_ rushing to tell me. Unless,” Lip hands Ian the joint and walks over to his bunk, pulling something out from under his bed and waving it at Ian like a flag, “you got sucked off by a dude? For instance.”

Ian gapes at him like a fish. Lip throws whatever “evidence” he has on the bed and leaves in a hurry, passing her on his way. Mal crosses her arms and doesn’t even try to hide the fact that she was listening.

“Nice job,” she says to him. He waves a hand in her direction and heads downstairs.

Ian is curled up in bed, and even though he isn’t facing her she knows he’s crying. Silently, the only way you really can cry in a house full of seven people (eight, when Frank’s around). She sits down at the foot of the bed.

“Ian…” Mal says, putting a hand on his shoulder that he quickly jerks away. There’s a beat of silence. Then, “Lip’s an ass.”

Ian lets out a sound that isn’t quite a laugh but isn’t quite a sob either.

“So you heard everything?” he asks, muffled by his pillow, staring out at the door frame that Lip had just walked through.

She nods.

“Well?” He turns and looks at her for the first time. His voice is still teary but there is a bit of that Gallagher challenge peaking through.

“How did you know?” Mal asks, looking down at her hands. “That you like guys.”

Ian sighs. “I don’t know. For a long time.”

“And you don’t like girls?”

“Nope.”

Mal bites a nail.

“Mal?”

“Yeah?”

“Lip freaked. Why don’t you?”

She leans her head against the wall and stares at the ceiling above them. They really need to get those leaks checked out.

“I don’t know...I guess, I --” Mal sighs. “I might know how you feel.”

Fiona is strong. Lip is smart. Ian is committed. Debbie is organized. Carl is curious. They all have their roles, and their strengths. And Mal? Mal is half-good at a bunch of things but never full-good at anything, and that frustrates the shit out of her.

“Just in general sense, you know,” she quickly says, her heart beating faster. Ian nods.

She punches him lightly on the arm. “Lip just needs to get used to it. Fuck ‘im if he doesn’t, but you know he will.”

“I know,” Ian says, but he still sounds kind of unsure.

Mal jumps up from the bed and holds out a hand for Ian to take. She can hear the sound of V’s familiar laughter, quickly followed by Fiona’s and another voice she can’t recognize.

“Come on,” she says.

The descend down the stairs to find join their siblings as Vee seems to be tweezing through some mystery guy’s hair. Carl is fascinated by the injury and Debbie is shy for once in her life. Ian won’t look anyone in the eye.

“Hey Debbie, why do they call him Lip?” asks the mystery guy, whispering like it’s a secret.

“‘Cause he never shuts the fuck up,” pipes in Mal, still mad at him for handling the whole situation with Ian so badly. It doesn’t make Ian laugh but he does exhale a little bit and she considers that a win.

Lip flips her off.

“His real name’s Phillip,” Debbie finally explains.

Apparently the mystery guy’s name is Steve and he tried to save Fiona from getting her purse stolen, even punched Jimmy Clifton too. Hopefully she wasn’t hanging on to any money - the electric bill is still late. Kev stops by for his keys, pissed at them for always stealing his shit, but Kev can never stay mad for long. While they all rag on Steve about the bouncer and his past convictions, Fiona keeps sending Steve these small smiles. Mal knows her sister’s type, and he’s it. Mal will be using her ear plugs tonight.

“Okay, come on guys, time for bed! Up the wooden hill,” Fiona says, and the younger Gallagher siblings groan but do as they’re told.

Mal gets the kids ready for bed, pisses (because she never did do that earlier), and makes sure that Liam is fast asleep before going to take her nightly shower. There’s a crash downstairs. Mal rolls her eyes and turns off the light.

 

\---

 

As she combs the knots out of her damp hair, she finds Carl, Debbie, Lip, and Ian all standing in front of the boys’ bedroom window. Fiona’s new guy must be leaving in his fancy car.

“He sure didn’t last long,” Mal says, crossing her arms over her chest as she grins down at her feet.

Lip snorts at her joke. “Knew he wouldn’t.” He quietly adds “pussy” to the end of that as if Carl won’t hear it.

“I liked him,” Debbie says, sounding kind of sad.

Mallory sighs. Her little sister gets so attached to everything and everyone. “I know, Debs.” Her brothers are climbing into their bunks; the excitement for the night is over and done with. She motions for Debbie to follow her to their room. “Come on.”

Mal and Debbie settle in for the night. Well, Mal does.

“Wait!” says Debbie, reaching out to one of her pink pillows and clutching it in her hands. “For Daddy!”

She jumps out of bed. Mal can hear the pitter-patter of her feet on the stairs, off to save their useless father from a stiff neck that he will no doubt complain about in the morning regardless.

Eventually Debbie comes back and snuggles into her remaining pillows.

“Night, Mal,” she says.

“Night, Debs,” Mal says right back.

 

\---

 

Working at the library is a pretty decent job, all things considered. Old geezers surf the internet on ancient computers despite not knowing what the fuck they’re doing. Occasionally someone will try to steal the DVDs so they’ve started keeping them behind the counter. Today one guy asks if they have any porn to check out while very clearly staring at her boobs rather than her eyes. Mal’s pretty sure he’s in one of her math classes.

So, not a terrible job. She’s heard some of Fiona’s horror stories. They pay her minimum wage and she can do her homework when they aren’t busy. It’s close enough to home that it isn’t a train ride away but she still keeps something sharp close by when walking back after closing, like tonight.

Mallory throws her backpack on the kitchen table along with her shiv and calls out to her siblings. The house is surprising quiet. “Fiona? Lip?”

“Up here!” Fiona yells.

Mal tries not to trip on the shoes that cover the staircase. Carl is really going to kill her one of these days. He’d probably like that too much, though.

Lip is laying on Carl’s bed with his foot on a pillow, face twisted in pain as V pokes and prods at it. “Pack of smokes and a lighter,” V says to Ian, who is apparently about to leave.

“What _happened_?” Mal asks, eyes wide.

Fiona goes to answer when there’s a loud knock at the front door and suddenly her two brothers are diving under their beds.

“I’m not here! I’m not _here_!”

“You’ve never heard of us, Fiona!”

Fiona looks pissed. Whatever bullshit story Ian and Lip tried to feed her clearly isn’t true.

“What. Have. You. Done?” she says. “What have you done?!”

She stomps out of the boys’ room to go answer the door.

Mal looks up to Carl and Debbie sitting on Lip’s top bunk. Carl jumps down from the bed and follows after Fiona, probably grabbing the baseball bat as he goes. Mal tilts her head at Debbie and silently asks for an explanation.

“Lip got his foot stuck in the train door, tryin’ to help some old lady!” Debbie says. “He’s a hero!”

Mallory rolls her eyes. Bullshit.

Lip and Ian are silent in their hiding places. Mal crosses the room, leans a leg on Ian’s bed and looks through the blinds. There’s a Sears van parked out front.

“Holy shit,” Mal says. Some guy is unloading a washer and bringing it onto the front porch.

“What!” Debbie says, climbing down to join her.

Fiona is talking to the delivery guy, shaking her head as she’s handed a piece of paper. After a while she must give up, because the washer is being wheeled through the front door.

“Where'd we get the money for _that_?” asks Debbie, once she’s gotten over her shock.

“We didn’t.” Mal places a hand on Debbie’s shoulder. “You were right, Debs. Maybe Steve is a nice guy.”

You could practically see the hearts in her little sister’s eyes. Debbie Gallagher, the romantic. Mal hopes Debs can hold onto that feeling for as long as possible, and Mal silently vows to see it happen.

Mallory moves from the window and kicks under the bed. Ian lets out an _oof_. “Whoever you’re hiding from isn’t here,” she says. “It’s some delivery guy.”

Ian sighs and climbs out; Lip does the same. They both look miserable as they lay on their beds.

“Hey,” Mal lays a hand on Debbie’s head. “Why don’t you go downstairs and help Fiona? She might let you do a load.”

Her little sister nods and leaves the room, looking almost excited at the thought of doing laundry in a washer that actually works.

“So,” Mallory crosses her arms and asks, “What’d ya do?” She mostly aims this question at Lip. Lip is constantly pissing someone off; Ian, usually with him, has no choice but to be involved.

Ian sighs again. “Karen Jackson’s dad wants to kill me,” he says.

“ _You_? Why you?”

“He caught Karen sucking him off,” Lip explains, then laughs. “Under the table. Literally.”

From what she remembers of Mr. Jackson he isn’t exactly the worst guy. Kinda judgemental but not the worst father the South Side has to offer. Karen hated him though.

Mallory shakes her head, confused. “Why would you do that? Aren’t you --” She makes a hand gesture but doesn’t say the word. Ian doesn’t say anything back, looking kind of defeated.

She stomps over to Lip and starts shoving at him. “Ow, hey! What the fuck,” he protests. As if this situation doesn’t have his name written all over it.

“This was your fucking idea, wasn’t it?” She puts her hands on her hips. Lip adjusts his injured foot, looking offended. “You find out your brother likes dudes so you whore him out to your lab partner? Don’t you hear how that sounds? Fucking homophobic, _Phillip_.”

“Jesus, Mal, don’t be dramatic,” Ian says, rolling over onto his side.

Mal shakes her head. Fine. She goes to sit in the desk chair.

They sit in silence. Mallory picks at her fingernails, trying to find the courage to ask about Karen.

(She doesn’t.)

She does, however, grab a glass of water and and a few ibuprofen. She puts them on Lip’s side table as he sleeps.

 

\---

 

Karen and Mallory became best friends on a hot summer day. Fiona was probably ten years old at the time, Lip was six, and Mallory and Ian followed close behind at five and four. The van was their home, and Fiona would drag them to the park when Frank and Monica went to buy drugs and left them for days at a time.

Karen had been having a picnic with her mother, Sheila, when Lip kicked a ball into their fancy cheese platter.

Fiona was busy with a crying Ian and his skinned knee. Lip and Mal were fighting over who would go get their prized ball.

(You’re probably wondering, “How could they afford a ball to play with?”

They couldn’t; Lip stole it from a kid that was tying his shoe. Fiona had watched him do it but did nothing to stop him.

Fiona was the best.)

“You kicked it, you get it!” protested Mallory.

“I was kicking it to _you,_ dummy.” Lip crossed his arms across his chest, curling his lip and using his I’m-smarter-than-you voice. Mal hated that voice. “You weren’t fast enough, that’s not my fault.”

Mallory rolled her eyes but went after the ball. At least Lip didn’t use his age (one whole year older) as an excuse this time.

When she reached the woman and her young daughter, she quickly grabbed the ball, muttered a quick “Sorry” and made a run for it.

“Sweetie, hi! No need to apologize!” said the woman, smiling brightly as she gestured to herself and then her daughter. “I’m Sheila, and this is my daughter Karen.”

Karen’s blonde (almost white) hair had been pulled in two pigtails; she was wearing a dress with flowers on it. (Knowing Sheila, she probably stitched it herself.) Mallory remembers how she looked down at her own hand-me-down clothes and tangled hair. Back then, Monica was never around to wish her goodnight let alone comb through her hair, and Frank had kicked them out of several shelters by stealing from the collection bucket; she could hardly remember the last time she bathed. Karen’s face pinched up at the sight of her.

“Hi,” Mallory shyly said.

Sheila and Karen waited for her to say more. When she didn’t, Karen rolled her eyes and said, “Well, what’s your name?” Harshly, as if Mallory was wasting her time.

“Mallory,” she whispered.

“Oh! That is such a beautiful name, isn’t it, Karen?” Sheila says, nudging her daughter. “Would you like to join us, Mallory? We have brie, gouda, havarti, and my favorite, _gruyère.”_ She said the last word in a weird accent while gesturing to the plate of cheese that Lip’s ball had scattered everywhere. They all looked gross to Mallory. That thought must have been clear on her face, seeing as Karen looked even more annoyed with her than she did before.

“Her parents are probably looking for her,” Karen mutters, ripping grass from the ground beside their blanket.

“They’re not here.” Mal shrugged before pointing at her siblings. “But my sister Fiona is over there with my brothers Lip and Ian. Lip was the one who kicked the ball over here but since I’m younger he made me go get it. Do you have any brothers?”

Karen was _glaring_ at her and Mallory had no idea why. To Mallory, asking if someone has any brothers was a perfectly good question to ask.

“Yes, my Karen is an only child,” Sheila stared down at the cheese plate, looking kind of stressed. “Oh, well, if we just cut these pieces in half we can -- wait, no --“

“Mom. Mom,” said Karen, reaching out to her mother, trying to get her attention. “Look, they’re busy playing. See?”

Lip seemed to have forgotten about his ball, busy on the swings with Ian (no longer crying) as Fiona pushed them both. Karen was right; they seem to be having a good time.

Mal turns back to Sheila and Karen. Karen looked at her mother, then Mal, then at the empty space on the picnic blanket beside her. Mallory took that as an invitation to sit down. So she did.

Mallory can’t quite remember what caused Karen to stop glaring at her and suddenly start liking her. But that doesn’t really matter, because the rest of their childhoods were spent in each other’s back pockets, so who cares about the turning point? Over the years they had countless sleepovers at Karen’s nice house, Sheila feeding them constantly and (once they reached a certain age) offering them alcohol. Mallory cried on Karen’s shoulder when Monica left for the third time. Karen was Mal’s first kiss in a game of Truth or Dare.

“You’ve been such a good friend to my Karen,” Sheila would say, picnics in the park a thing of the past.

That was a few years ago, before Karen skipped a grade and left Mal behind in junior high. Clearly they weren’t as good of friends as Sheila (and Mallory) had thought.

It’s not a big deal or anything. She just wishes Karen hadn’t traded her in for Lip, who wouldn’t even go after his ball in the first place.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest: I wrote this purely for me. I had a dream, there was a redhead Gallagher sibling that wasn't Debbie, and I had the urge alright 😂 I also felt like Fiona needed a sister who wasn't as young as Debbie. What do you guys think? If even one person reads this I'll be thrilled.
> 
> This might become a series, might not, but I felt like this was a good start. I definitely have some heart-to-hearts in mind for Fiona and Mal. And I know that a lot of this is straight from the script but I don't care 🤷 We all need some season one nostalgia amirite? (before Shameless turned to shit and broke my heart)
> 
> If anyone's curious about what Mal looks like, [here ya go:](https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-beautiful-redhead-teen-giving-a-tight-smile-for-the-camera-30821351.html)
> 
> Comments make me so happy!


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